From Silos to Services: Cloud Computing for the Enterprise

[A better title might be, “How to Drive Yourself Crazy Thinking About Your Career in Tech”]

I wasn’t around when the horse and buggy era ended, but sometimes I feel like I’m having the same conversations that the blacksmiths, saddle makers and stable sweeps had back in the early 1900s. Fast forward a hundred years and this 3rd platform transition has a lot of people wondering what to do next.

Let me step back and put some of this in context. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Internet changed everything. Where we work. How we work. The importance of technology for business success. And because of technology, very few of us have the same career path that our parents had before us.

Companies are no longer centrally located, with their workforces being globally dispersed.

Companies no longer maintain all their own internal services, often using resources available over the Internet to achieve the best mix of price and service.

Companies no longer provide long-term pension plans (except some government agencies), so employees rarely stay at the same companies for their entire career.

Customers (buyers) no longer get all of their knowledge from their suppliers. The Internet allows thousands of voices and opinions to impact their knowledge and buying decisions.

Customers (buyers) are increasingly looking for new sources and consumption models for the technology that will help their businesses.

Public Cloud and Open Source Software are moving the margins and control away from vendors and onto parties that can more directly control their future. The supply chain is shifting and with it is the location of value-capture.

So what does this have to do with Cloud Computing? Most people would tend to think that the majority of my days and nights are filled with deep, enlightening conversations about the topic. I wish. In fact, I am spending more and more of my time with people asking what’s next, specifically as it relates to their career in technology.

The Rise of the Rockstars

No phrase in our industry drives me crazier than “He/She is a Rockstar!” Why? A couple reasons:

Most bands aren’t made up of dozens of people on stage; instead it’s just a few. So most people are either roadies or groupies.

Rockstars travel. A lot. That’s part of the job. The big money is in being close to the customer. No travel, no rockstar.

Not all rockstars make the big money. There are plenty that are only headlining at small venues in 2nd or 3rd-tier cities.

It happens because smart people use technology and are able to work away from Bay Area, Seattle, Boston, Austin. It happens because some companies (for a while) will pull their best people out of the field (eg. SE’s) and centralize their ability to advance a new technology. It happens because those smart people enjoy the attention and create their “own personal brand” (reinforcing the “rockstar” mindset). It happens because companies eventually realize that early knowledge has been distributed and is no longer worthy of premium pricing. It happens because not everyone wants to live in the Bay Area (can you blame them?).

I know a lot of people in the technology industry that fit this profile. They are really smart. They do excellent work. They are 35-45yrs and very capable of learning new things – although sometimes they need to be reminded of this. And in many cases, their companies don’t see their value any more, at least under certain circumstances. And they don’t fit the startup mold because they’d prefer not to move or the startups aren’t close on compensation.

So where do they go next? Hopefully not here. Their ability to learn is there, and it’s never had less of a barrier. Does it take hard work and extra hours – yes – but that’s how these people got to this level of their career. And unless the lottery winnings or inheritance is coming soon, these people have another 20yrs of working years left in their career. Sometimes the answer is hard work + perseverance + stick it out + willingness to learn. No wait, that’s always the answer.

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I think the last paragraph here is probably most important - more and more people recognize that getting comfortable in one place for the duration of a career is a thing of the past. It's more likely that you're going to encounter several transition points at which you're going to have to learn new skills and change your conception of what it is that you do.

@Ben, I would tend to agree. Where I find most people having challenges is a couple areas:

The pace of change is faster than ever before, both in terms of technology and economics. People are struggling to not only figure out what should be next, but also how to make the transition.

Many of the new skills required are very different than learning in the past - for example, it's very difficult for someone focused on infrastructure (networking, storage) to quickly learn software development skills (eg. for DevOps, SDN, API interaction, etc)

Learning takes time (often several years) and people struggle with how to start a transition and picking the right choice. The disruption to people is as significant as it is to the overall technology market, which is somewhat different than the past 15-20yrs, where is was more gradual shifts.

I've been learning a bit about Requisite Organization models lately, and there are some pretty compelling ideas in there that put a bit more science around the fuzzy notion of the "rock star" and how they should be put to best use (as well as how to keep them engaged, and what their leadership structure should look like).

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